I know a woman who sits down every Sunday afternoon, pulls out a box of stationery and cards, and writes notes to people.

Sometimes they’re letters; sometimes, a few words on the bottom of a card. Whatever the occasion, every Sunday, she writes to someone. She doesn’t type. She doesn’t text. She pulls out a pen and paper the old-fashioned way. She sits at her kitchen table where she can see the birds feeding in the winter and the flowers in her garden the rest of the year, and she lets people know that she’s thinking of them.

Joel and Liz Leo along with Liz's father, Andrew Waid found hidden in the ceiling while remodeling an upstairs bedroom. They're a window into a romantic couple who flourished during the early 1900s,
(Photo by Katy Batdorff/The Grand Rapids Press)MLive.com file photo

She says her Sunday-afternoon ritual grounds her. It calms her spirit; it makes her feel better about herself, even though that was not the original intent. The sound of the pen on paper, the movement of the written word, the thought and time it takes to write to someone -- writing has become an important part of her day.

It’s how she starts out the week: An intentional act of kindness.

We’ve been hearing a lot about acts of kindness, intentional, random and otherwise, these days. In the wake of the crushing sadness of Newtown, Conn., where 26 children and teachers were massacred, NBC reporter Ann Curry asked a grieving nation: What if each of us committed 26 acts of kindness as a way to honor their memories?

It was a prayer, kind of. A plea.

People across the country have responded in an astounding manner -- buying coffee for strangers, putting money in expired parking meters, passing out compliments, donating teddy bears to children in hospitals, taking balloons to schools and senior centers, paying on a stranger’s Christmas gift layaway plan.

Truth is, we needed to do something.

As a people, we can only stand so much bad news: hurricanes and snowstorms; politics, not for the greater good, but as usual; children and teachers gunned down in Newtown; firefighters slain when responding to an emergency in the early hours of Christmas Eve in Webster, N.Y.

But what do you do when you can’t fix downed power lines or take soup to a family who spent the first Christmas without a child or grandmother, or stand in line to offer condolences?

You do something nice for someone else.

If it sounds simple, it is. If it seems too good to be true, meaning that buying someone you don’t know a cup of coffee might change the world, I’m not so sure of that. An act of kindness could just restore your faith in yourself, and that’s a start toward restoring one’s faith in humanity.

The interesting sidebar to this story is that people are reporting their acts of kindness, posting each one so others know about them throughout social media’s stratosphere.

Usually my Midwestern sensibilities balk at such behavior. When the random acts of kindness movement started so many years ago, part of its appeal was that it was anonymous. The intent was not to bring attention to oneself. It was doing good for goodness’ sake, being kind even if no one else witnessed it.

But right now, given the state of things, maybe we need to hear the good news. Maybe we need to know that people in every part of this country are trying to do their best, countering the horror, finding a way to offset the sense of hopelessness that’s enveloped us these last weeks.

And who knows? Maybe it will become habit. Like my friend who has written notes for so many Sunday afternoons, maybe we’ll work acts of kindness into our routines. Maybe it will become second nature: part of who we are as individuals, and a nation.